Women in Search of Balls, Circa 2009
My girlfriend takes a body-rolling class.
The teacher tells her to practice
10 minutes a night while watching TV.
The book tells her the series of pelvic
exercises will make our love-making—
anyone’s love-making—
everyone’s love-making—
more “pleasurable & intense.”
Who doesn’t want that?
I like the idea of more “pleasurable &
intense” love-making, but I don’t like
the word “love-making.” What’s wrong
with “fucking?” I say. Must we be so
pristine? What’s wrong with a little
good old-fashioned fucking?
But the problem, it turns out, is not
one of nomenclature, but one of supplies:
“We need balls,” she says.
“Since when?”
“Spongy pink balls,” she says.
“Why?”
“For my feet—for my body-rolling,” she says.
“Oh,” I say, feeling sheepish. Of course.
We scour the basement, but as it turns out,
we don’t have any balls—there, or anywhere.
We are a household entirely devoid of balls.
We have a combination lock that we don’t
know the combination for. We have an ID
bracelet, a monkey wrench, a set of old Spy
Tech walkie-talkies, & a cat scratching post
with most of the carpet scratched off—
but no balls.
We have—
but no balls.
So I call up the store, & I say to the man
who answers—
“Sir, could you tell me—do you have
spongy pink balls?”
Click, the receiver goes.
So I call up a different store, & more
cautiously, I say to the woman who answers—
“Perhaps you could help me—I’m looking for a set
of balls—”
She is quick to intercept me—
“Then why don’t you grow a pair?”
“Don’t hang up—I need balls.”
Click.
“I’m looking to buy some spongy
pink balls—”
Click.
“It’s for body-rolling. My girlfriend
needs balls—”
Click.
“We’re going to have to try the Internet,”
she says, so I type in what, according to
Ockham’s Razor, should be the simplest
location: www.balls.com
It’s a blog site, but nobody mentions balls—
not where to get them, nothing.
The commentary goes like this:
i love to watch people suck their wieners
i like big wieners
i love to suck wieners all the time
i enjoy watching other people do it too
Want to contribute?
Join or sign in
(Site last accessed by author 7/12/09)
“I think we’re going to have to go to the store,”
I say.
“The real store—out there where the people are?”
“Yes,” I say.
“But I’m in my bathrobe, & I’m sleepy, & it’s Sunday.
Who goes to the store on Sunday to buy balls?”
“Someone who needs them for body-rolling,” I say.
“Are we going to a toy store?”
“I think we should.”
“Is a toy store the best place to buy balls?”
“I think it is.”
“On Sunday?”
“On any day,” I say.
“But won’t it seem creepy—that we don’t have kids,
& are trying to buy balls, just the two of us, without kids,
on a Sunday?”
“Good point,” I say. “We’ll have to buy balls on
Tuesday afternoon.”
She agrees & pours more coffee.
“You can do almost anything on a Tuesday afternoon.”
Julie Marie Wade teaches poetry, creative nonfiction, and hybrid forms at Florida International University in Miami. She received the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir for her first book, Wishbone: A Memoir In Fractures (Colgate University Press, 2010; Bywater Books, 2014) in 2011. Her newest collection is Just an Ordinary Woman Breathing, forthcoming from The Ohio State University Press in February 2020.
